Quite unbelievably, despite reporting a problem to Paypal on 26 August, we have STILL not received confirmation that this problem has been resolved. Here’s the background…
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On 26 August we identified a serious problem with Paypal.
StatCounter members who had upgraded in the previous few days had NOT been appropriately upgraded as the Paypal system stopped sending out subscription payment notifications. In fact new subscriptions were no longer created at all and payments received were not linked to StatCounter accounts.
In short, we were receiving hundreds of Paypal payments which we couldn’t link to any StatCounter account. As you can imagine, this caused serious difficulties for us.
We reported the problem to Paypal with as much supporting evidence as possible to assist them in quickly identifying the problem… but, as we have come to expect, the first response from Paypal completely ignored the information we supplied and denied the problem.
It’s now 5 WEEKS since we reported this issue to Paypal and we have STILL not received confirmation that this problem has been resolved. We feel we have been more than patient at this stage and remain astounded that any company can treat its customers with such disregard.
While we understand that ALL services can have problems from time to time we find Paypal’s habit of ignoring its customers to be abhorrent. We are particularly upset that Paypal’s poor behaviour can and does impact on you, our members, and also unfairly reflects on us.
Our Position
As a result of this Paypal problem, we had to manually examine hundreds of payments, attempt to link these to StatCounter accounts and where this wasn’t possible we had to contact the payees individually to request their StatCounter usernames. As you can imagine, this had a high cost for us in terms of time and resources. Further, although these problems were caused by Paypal, StatCounter has absorbed all the costs of this problem. We also felt it was only right for us to offer all affected members a free upgrade for one month to make amends for the problems. Paypal, of course, offered us (their customer) absolutely nothing by way of assistance for the trouble they caused us.
Unfortunately, we have been here before… At that time, we decided NOT to remove Paypal as a payment option for new subscribers. This was because we highly value each of our members and, despite OUR poor opinion of Paypal, we have to cater to what YOU, our members want. However, we are now again considering our position in relation to Paypal…
Your Feedback Please
Due to the problems outlined above, Paypal has been suspended as a payment option (for NEW subscriptions) on StatCounter since 26 August and remains so. We can’t possibly reactivate it until such time as Paypal confirms that the problems introduced in August have been fixed… but we have no idea when that will be. In the meantime, we’d like to ask you, our members, for your thoughts on this.
Both problems we have had with PayPal have been with their subscription payments. During this problem and the last one, regular Paypal manual payments appeared to be functioning normally. On this basis, we are wondering if we should STOP accepting PayPal subscriptions and accept only manual payments instead? Manual payments *would* require our upgraded customers to log in to Paypal every time a payment falls due… so perhaps we will have to restrict Paypal upgrades to quarterly or yearly – logging in every month to pay could be a bit too time consuming! We’re not sure about this idea, so do let us know your thoughts!
We’d also love to know what alternative payment options we can introduce to cater for your payment preferences.
Here are our initial thoughts…
- We need to accept Discover cards – if you can recommend an acquirer for a European company, please let us know
- We need to accept AMEX for USD payments – currently we can only accept AMEX directly for EUR payments
- We need to accept echecks – please let us know if you can recommend any echeck processors
Note that we already accept VISA, Mastercard, AMEX (for EUR payments), wire/bank transfer, EUR/USD checks/cheques.
Please post below with any other card or payment method you think we should accept and feel free to share any comments or suggestions you may have. Thanks folks.
UPDATE: Please note that existing, active Paypal subscriptions are not affected by the suspension of Paypal on StatCounter – this affects NEW subscriptions only.
We use paypal and works without problems so far, their fees are a little higher, unfortunately lot of people have that thanks to ebay but come on wolrd is changing, some of those new services might work the same or better, i’m opening my alterpay account today , google checkout works fine too, thanks..
Ivan Usma
http://www.usabis.com Hosting – Domains – Dedicated Servers
Alas, I am also in the market for an alternative provider of financial services to replace Paypal.
Recently my Paypal account has been frozen twice for the most absurbe excuse possible, this indicate a compturised system , or, interlocked systems, which they will not be able to fix, and, to overcome the auto generated idiotsyncracies would need to employ human checkers forcing the administrative running costs beyond tolerable economic scale, unfortunately, the fix such programing mismanagement is generaly to complicate the system ever more, when the solution is to have very inteligent programmer reviewing the system in view to cut out the crapy bits.
I’ve used Paypal for a long time now to RECEIVE payments – as an Aussie it’s often the only way I can get paid as an international affiliate. Given that, I prefer to use my Paypal balance to MAKE payments, because otherwise I incur charges to transfer the money to my bank account.
That means that where I have a choice between using a supplier who offers Paypal, and one who doesn’t, I’m more likely to choose the former.
However, I sympathise with your situation. I’ve heard lots of complaints about Paypal – they’re part of the eBay stable, after all, and have exactly the same lack of customer service.
Forget PayPal and switch to Google Checkout! I had nothing but GOOD experience with Google Check out.
The idiots working for PayPal are a bunch of thieves and they will ROB your account blind.
They raided my account and stole over 4k in payments that I had in my account. I was STUPID to leave all that money there.
Back in October of 2010, a person paid me via PayPal. All of the sudden I was informed that the payment will be held from me for 21 days. I called PayPal and got a real live person on the phone and complained about the 21 day hold on my payment. The PayPal service Rep was very firm on the 21 day hold. After realizing that I was getting no where with them, I told the PayPal service rep that I will file a complaint with the New York State Attorney Generals office (AG). At that time, I asked another question and the PayPal customer service rep said that she will not answer anymore questions. I then asked her WHY and she told me because I mentioned the AG that it has become a legal issue and their legal department would have to handle it now. I asked to speak to them and she transferred me. When their legal department rep answered the phone, I identified myself and was informed that my money has been released to me. They would NOT address any questions I asked in regard to the 21 day hold except that the monies has been released. I checked my account on PayPal while I was still on the phone with the legal rep and all the monies had been released. I withdrew the monies from my PayPal account and it took 6 days before it showed up in my bank. Since then I have closed my PayPal account.
Now my question is, WHY did they release my money without any comment in regard to my mentioning of filing a complaint with the AG’s office? What are they trying to hide? It looks to me as though what ever they are doing must not be legal…
I am using paypal from long time now and never had anyissue with them, but I think its better to have multiple options,.paypal, google checkout or 2checkout etc.
We are transitioning many of our clients from PayPal to Google Checkout. PayPal’s technical difficulties cost time and money. And guess what? They don’t care.
In many countries, most of people use PayPal to global checkout.
They only know and use PayPal.
I am now rethinking my use of Paypal cause they don’t sound like any pal I’d want.
see if the following sites might be relevant:
1. swreg.org
2. moneybooker.com
3. alertpay.com
PayPal and Google are part of the fascist U.S. government.
e-gold was a viable alternative for internet payments with security and privacy. But the Feds shut them down with impossible Catch-22 demands.
Google shut down my blog about government confiscation of e-gold customer assets.
Paypal has always worked for me. I feel more secure not having my credit card info out all over the place.
Without Paypal I will not be paying for my stat counter/
paypal needs to have serious competition so that they don’t rest on their laurels.
Reading through this I wonder if paypal is getting interest when an account is “LIMITED”
They are the only one on the block for now. If they do not get their act together soon they will lose many customers.
Hello, but did you try to use some plugin to help your blog get away from the spamer? Maybe you’ll have a test?
WoW there…
Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. You have it backwards. Work with existing clients to change their method of payment or have them pay on an annual basis or something. Let newbies pay how they can it s hard enough to get people to pull the trigger.
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Second…
It is so refreshing to see a company come out with such transparency and genuine intentions. It is also refreshing to see a company willing to sacrafice but not willing to raw dog it (not with out a genorous tip at least).
I say work with existing to find new solution. let new ones sign up how they please.
– Finance Guy